Trouble Printing Coupons?

January 7, 2009

I have heard that many of you have had trouble printing Bricks coupons: that you keep getting a “please wait” or “please install printer” message. If this seems to be your problem I have found some information that may be helpful to you.

The problem is that most of these coupons have a link that is meant to be printed in a certain browser (i.e. Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari). When you try to print a coupon in a different browser than was intended, you will get one of those annoying messages

The trick below is made by just changing two characters in the link.

The following is a Firefox link: hxxp://bricks.coupons.com/Start.asp?tqnm=ri3peuo59687503&bt=wg&o=53740&ci=1&c=GM&p=TyQrvJAY

Note the “wg” in the URL (I have put it in bold for you). This is telling you it is a Firefox link.

To make that link an Internet Explorer link, you will simply change the “wg” to “wi” or “vi”. It will take a little trial and error to determine which combination will be the fix. The easiest way to make this fix is to paste the original link into a Word document, make the change needed and then paste the corrected link into the address bar and press “enter” on the keyboard.

If the link had a “wi” or “vi” it would be an Internet Explorer link. To make it print in Firefox, just change the “wi” or “vi” to “wg”.

You can also use this trick to print coupons in Safari. Just replace the “wg”, “wi”, or “vi” to “xs”. And to get a Safari link to print in a different browser, change the “xs” to“wi” or “vi” for Internet Explorer or to “wg” for Firefox.

Comments

Thank you so much! We’ve wanted to sell some of our computers (my husband is a geek and computers somehow multiply like bunnies here) but I couldn’t sell my laptop because it would leave me with only one Windows machine to print from in the house. I need at least two computers I can print Bricks from to feed my habit! Now I’ll be able to get Bricks to work through Safari!

Thank you so much for this information. I have been frustrated at times too. I still can’t print coupons that are powered by smart source. I thought I could change the ‘wg’ but there is not one there for these coupons. Any ideas? Is it there and I am missing it?

I guess the fix above is just for Bricks coupons. Here is something I found in a forum that might help you, but I don’t think everyone is having the same problems printing Smart Source coupons so the fix may be a little more difficult.

“I was able to print coupon.com coupons just fine with any browser, but in order to print Smartsource coupons I had to use Mozilla Foxfire Browser and change my printer settings to “Print Directly to Printer”.

You do this by going into Control Panel, left click on Printers, highlight Your Printer Icon then right click to drop down the menu, left click on Properties, choose the Advanced tab, down in the middle you will see where you can choose “Print Directly to Printer” choose that, then hit apply if it is highlighted and then OK.

My computer keeps this setting unless I manually change it back. Its easy to change back if you need to. Works good and coupons print nice.

Nothing seems to work with Internet Explorer browser for Smartsource coupons, but someone on one of the other threads recommended downloading the Safari Browser to print coupons they said that works too. They said there is about a 20 second delay before the coupons print, so expect the delay. I pulled my hair out for a month trying to print SS coupons, hope this helps.”

I was going to look on the Smart Source site to see if there was a # where you could contact them but I can’t even get the site to load right now.

Thank you so much. I can’t wait to get home and try this. I’m especially excited to see if the smart source coupons will now print. I haven’t been able to print them and I’ve been trying for 6 months! I even emailed Smart source and they were no help, just referred me back to there FAQ page that I’ve read a million times.

I’m not really great with computers. When you download the the foxfire browser does it affect your opening web page and email? I really want to be able to print smart source coupons but I don’t want to jump into something I don’t know anything about. Thanks.

Thanks! I have had so much frusteration over this and even talked to the IT guys about it and they just said to try another browser. But, that is so annoying to use different browsers for different coupons.

I’m glad I’m not the only one having trouble with smart source coupons. I’ve started contacting the companies when I have trouble and asking for the coupons by mail. They don’t always have the coupons but then they know there is a problem.

I clearly am doing something very wrong. I want this ‘fix’ to work, but it doesn’t. Some Bricks coupons print just fine – some will not print no matter what. I get into that ‘Install Printer’ loop and it just clicks and clicks and clicks – drives me crazy.

SO, this is the URL I see in Internet Explorer – this is trying to print the new St. Ives coupon today:

I DO NOT see the the letters to change as mentioned in this thread. I do see ‘vg’ in the URL above. If I change to ‘wi’ or ‘vi’ here it does nothing. What am I missing? I know I’m not technical, but I never thought I was inept (smile). I cannot load Firefox or another progrma – not an option. Can someone help me?? Thanks!

I tried to rint a coupon and kept getting please wait and then I read the trouble section, but now when I try to print a specific coupon, even though I never got it to print, it says I have already printed it the number of times allowed.

For some reasons, I could not set the setting of my printer to direct print to printer, it is set to spool. I used to be able to print coupons from smart source but now whenever I try to print it from Firefox, it say firefox crash.

I made sure my printer was set to ‘spool’ and I did a test print of a SmartSource coupon for you. Make sure you allow the Coupon Manager Add-on to install from SmartSource and it should work. If you continue having trouble you can contact SmartSouce, but from what I have heard they are not very helpful.

I am guessing that even though the coupon did not print, the signal still went through saying that you were printing the coupon and now it thinks you have reached your limit. If you tell me what coupon you were trying to print I can look around and see if there is a link to request the coupon by mail. That is really all you can do.

Oh my this is just the information I needed! I was trying to print in Safari and kept getting the “please wait…”. I changed the “wi” to “xs” and the coupons printed immediately. thanks so much for this!

Your comment about having trouble printing coupons ended up in my spam folder and I just found it today. In your comment you said that you replaced the “vg” with with “wi” or “vi” and it did nothing. Did you hit enter afterwards? If not, try it and it should work after that.

Okay so I have tried everything here! I have internet explore and firefox. I have windows vista. Everytime I try to print my browser freezes, or says i need to install coupon installer (which I have), or it will continue to load forever, or it will say printer settings need to be changed. Which they have been. I have tried this numerous times on 3 different computers. Please HELP!!!

I came across a blog that explains how to I guess catch the coupon before it prints. I was having problems with attempting to print a bricks coupon and it wouldn’t go through and then it would say “Limit reached”. SO annoying!

It certainly helped me out a ton. I guess technically you could print as many as you want, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

I thought that I had posted a question but now I can’t find it so I’m trying again. I am using a laptop with Windows XP and my printer is an HP with a wireless hookup. It works fine for most print jobs but when I try to print the Smart Source coupons, it always tells me to download Java. I go through that process (over and over) and it tells me that it is installed but it never recognizes my default printer. I tried the “print directly to the printer” step from above but that didn’t help. Any help????

I have never been able to print smartsource coupons…not from my old laptop with XP, nor with my new one with Vista. My Father in law was able to print them for awhile on his computer and now they won’t print on his either! I would LOVE a solution to this!!!!!!! Maybe the grass is greener on the other side but it always looks like smartsource has the best coupons (and the ones I would really use!)

Thank you SO much for this information. What a lifesaver when my husband switched us from Internet Explorer to Firefox and suddenly nothing would print!! I have bookmarked the article and linked to it on my couponing site (http://momssavingmoney.blogspot.com/2009/06/trouble-with-printable-coupons.html). I know it will help tons of people out there who are as frustrated as I was! THANKS again!

I have a MAJOR problem printing coupons because I use my parent’s computer and they don’t have a printer, and at the public library were I do 98% of my internet work will not allow us to download those or so nessecary items! (Frustrated sigh) “It drives me crazy knowing that there are wonderful coupons that I can’t get, too!”

I followed the steps above and used the Firefox browser and I am still unable to print Smart Source coupons. It will print the picture and the bar code, but will not print the description on the coupon. Help! I am using an HP Officejet printer.

Hi, I am having this problem also. I use IE with Vista. For a while, I had no problem printing any coupons, then I started getting the “install coupon printer” message over and over. Changing the “vi” helped for a week or so and now it’s back. And nothing is working. I am EXTREMELY frustrated. Any suggestions?

Hi, I am having problems with printing coupons from coupon.com….have never had trouble have not changed any settings and just one day it quit printing with the message install coupon printer. I have spent so much time trying to fix this – – anyone have any tips?? Thanks!

Hi! I have been printing coupons online for over two years now and all of a sudden (about 8 months ago) I have not been able to print any coupons on coupons.com on either of my laptops. I had wondered if my IE8 upgrade has something to do with it so I went and uninstalled it and put IE7 back on. Still no go. I have emailed coupons.com several time and got 1 response. He gave me a suggestion of what to do and when I emailed him to tell him that it did not work he just disappeared and I never heard from him again.

I have installed the coupon printer more times than I can count. Each time I try to print from the main site or any of the bricks coupons it states that I need to install the coupon printer – so round and round we go. I have tried all of the suggestions I have found with changing the two letters to match the browser that is being used. I just tried to see if it would work in Google Chrome and after installing the printer for the 1000Th time that is all it says and needless to say I still have nothing to show for it.

Someone at coupons.com gave me the direct number to their tech guy, but every time I try to reach him I get voicemail. I can’t leave a message as I have blocked all unknown numbers and can’t be sure he will use the exact number I was given or not.

I am extremely upset by this as I have missed out on so MANY AWESOME deals for a while now.

If anyone has any insight into this problem I would really appreciate the help. I have tried everything I can think of and have no clue what the next step may be.

Copy and paste this (everything below ————) to a file, name the file bricks_coupon_fixer.html or anything.html does not matter.

Now double click it. Paste the url that will not print into the URL field and it should give you links that will now work. I have not tested this yet, but it should solve the issues stated at the beginning of this article. All it does is create links that replace the browser type flag (bt=flag) ————

(sorry last post broke the syntax, hope this works) Copy and paste this (everything below ————) to a file, name the file bricks_coupon_fixer.html or anything.html does not matter.

Now double click it. Paste the url that will not print into the URL field and it should give you links that will now work. I have not tested this yet, but it should solve the issues stated at the beginning of this article. All it does is create links that replace the browser type flag (bt=flag) ———— <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”> <html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”> <head> <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″ /> <title>Coupon Link Fixer</title>

I had been having trouble printing using the SmartSource coupon printer… I would get the message that it could not print. I was using IE and many posts on the internet suggested using another browser like FireFox. So I tried Safari which I had already installed… Still the same issue. It occurred to me that maybe the default printer setting was the issue. I was using my work laptop and was trying to print at home. Even though I set IE and Safari to use my HOME printer before attempting to print the coupon, and SmartSource Coupon printer should have used that setting, the default printer in Windows was still set to my default WORK printer which wasn’t available to me at home. So, after changing the Windows default printer (via Printers and Faxes) to my home printer, voila!!! I was able to print. To test if I could repeat it, I changed the Windows default printer back to my work printer (again, not avail to me at home), and once again, as expected, I could not print the coupon. I did this for both IE and Safari, one at a time, and was able to reproduce the can-print, can’t-print at will. I didn’t even have to exit out of IE or Safari to make the printer take affect. So, it appears that SmartSource only looks at the Windows Default printer setting, not what your browser is set to. Make sure you have your Windows default printer set to your desired printer, then print away. Hope this helps.

Hi, I was printing coupons off coupons.com for the longest time, and then all of a sudden my favorite coupon just says “Print Limit Reached.” No matter what I do (uninstall the printer, re-install, delete cookies, disable then re-enable the plugin, use different browsers, etc.) I still cannot print more than 1 or 2 coupons of the same coupon. Anyone know how to “reset” the plugin so that I can print the coupons again??? Thanks.

Lately I’ve been having trouble printing Bricks Qs. Every time I try to print it Firefox crashes. At first when this started, I could do it several times and it would finally work, but now I can try 10+ times and firefox still crashes. If I copy and paste the link to IE and fix the url, press enter and it automatically goes back to “wg”, and it still says I need to download the program. Any ideas?

hi – last month i began having issues printing brick coupons. my issue is simply that the coupons.com website, where the bricks coupons are coming from, would not load at all. it crashes continually on all browsers – safari, chrome, and ie. is there anything that i can do? i feel so helpless not being able to print out coupons so easily as before and it just mysteriously stopped loading these websites. any help is greatly appreciated!

Hi im trying to download “Coupon Printer” on my Mac and im having a lot of trouble with it. Im not so good when it comes to downloading and using software on computers. I read your post on the top of this page, i copied the link added “XS” since i have Safari and now what? Do i paste it in the field where it’s supposed to be “www. so and so .com”? because i did that and safari couldnt find the link. (hxxp://bricks.coupons.com/Start.asp?tqnm=ri3peuo59687503&bt=wg&o=53740&ci=1&c=GM&p=TyQrvJAY) Im Confused, please help. Thanks

Thanks for saving so much more hours wasted in trying to figure out how to get my coupons printing. Thanks to a free program named: Mozilla Firefox I was able to print all those coupons I spent ALL week trying to print up. Of course, on most of them I already bought the product (without the coupon discount) :-(, but I am just glad I can purchase now with at leave $10 savings!

Love that you posted this fix, but it’s telling me that my printer is not supported (using Safari). I can print coupons.com coupons just fine, have their thing installed and everything, but when I try to do a bricks coupon linked from another site I get their error message.

I requested to have the coupons mailed me, anybody know how long that usually takes? I’d like to be able to do the Zyrtec deal at CVS this coming week

I am having the same Problem as Sarah, I need help I do not wish to wait for my coupon to me mailed, I would like to print them asap. but it’s telling me that my printer is not supported (using Safari). I can print coupons.com coupons just fine, have their thing installed and everything, but when I try to do a bricks coupon linked from another site I get their error message.

I could print SmartSource coupons in April and May 2011 then I had the same problem, I could not print coupons in June 2011. I contacted SmartSource Support and they told me that “Our latest software is more rigorous in defining what printers are allowed and some users that previously were allowed to print are now seeing this error. Our system produces an automated report of any printer that is not allowed and our engineers then investigate to see if it indeed should not be blocked.” So possibly you are using one of their blocked pirnters. I would contact any website that uses SmartSource for priinting their coupons to let them know that SmartSource upgraded there software to block certain printers thus preventing from printing their coupons and less likely have consumers buying their product.

doesn’t work for me. I’m using safari to print ‘xs’ and have changed the code (still no result). our printer is from a million years ago (2002) and has had printing problems (it chooses what it wishes to print and not to print) the past 6months or so. do you think it’s the printer not reading bricks or using safari as a browser? up until 2 weeks ago it would print the coupons out just fine. what gives?! so frustrated. D:

i’ve been having this issue for weeks now where after clicking “print coupons” , a page comes up that explains it “sorry, we do not support your printer or one of your printer settings”… and trys to give me PC instructions for setting my default printer, and making sure I don’t have “keep printed documents” set…. HOWEVER, i have a MAC, so these instructions are useless. I am using Safari, and the “xs” is there, and I have no problems otherwise printing coupons from all other sites.

i tried to send a “help request”, but got an instant response saying “sorry, you must have caught us putting on more coupons! try back in a few minutes”…

omes up that explains it “sorry, we do not support your printer or one of your printer settings”… and trys to give me PC instructions for setting my default printer, and making sure I don’t have “keep printed documents” set…. HOWEVER, i have a MAC, so these instructions are useless. I am using Safari, and the “xs” is there, and I have no problems otherwise printing coupons from all other sites.

i tried to send a “help request”, but got an instant response saying “sorry, you must have caught us putting on more coupons! try back in a few minutes”…

Megan- I have same problem since I upgraded my OS to Snow Leopard. Only problem is with Bricks coupons. I can print from any other coupon site. Tried updating drivers for my printer-didn’t work. Tried loading older printer driver-didn’t work. And all this “xs” -is useless to current people.

I am having issues. I had coupons.com printer installed on my computer was working fine. Now all of a sudden I am no longer able to print coupons says the coupon printer installer is not compatible. Each time I try and download the printer from their website says I need to keep installing it even though it is listed on my programs on my computer. I have emailed coupons.com only gotten one response and nothing back on any explanation. Anyone have this same issue or know how to resolve the issues. Thanks

i’m having the same problem Laura. i have installed the coupon activator so many times. can’t get any help from Coupons.com. Anyone know anything to do? i have tried Firefox, Safari ….everything. so frustrating.

Someone I know had problems with coupon printer and finally managed to get it to install and also on a laptop that never worked! this is what they did, it is all to do with IE.

First download and install latest version of IE you can(I’m using 8) Then go to Tools>Internet options and slick on the security tab. Where it says set security level for this zone click custom levels. Then scroll down and click the check box to enable Activex controls and plugins. Then click ok and apply to exit out of the settings.

Use IE to go to chosen site and install coupon printer(or it may pop up at the top saying that a plugin may want to run if its already installed click yes)

I definitely need help printing the coupon graphics! The whole coupon prints fine, but it doesn’t show the pic of the item. I have tried all the suggestions of checking my printer’s nozzles and cleaned them according to the actual printer utilities. It says the nozzles aren’t clogged. I’ve tried IE8 and usually used Google Chrome, but it’s the same thing. HELP!

Hey there just wanted to give you a brief heads up and let you know a few of the images aren’t loading correctly. I’m not sure why but I think its a linking issue. I’ve tried it in two different browsers and both show the same results.

Its not my first time tto payy a visit this web page, i am visiting this web site dailly and obtain nice facts from here everyday.

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Thrifty Tip

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